


First Time

by micehell



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Humor, M/M, a tiny amount of angst-lite, the barest hint of schmoop
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-12-08
Updated: 2008-12-08
Packaged: 2017-11-12 04:10:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,967
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/486530
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/micehell/pseuds/micehell
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It was definitely a Christmas movie, but figuring out which one was just one of their problems.</p>
            </blockquote>





	First Time

Getting separated on a mission? Something they'd done a hundred times. Running from locals who had decided that they were infidels/spies/thieves/lunch? About sixty times. Holding a family hostage on the local equivalent of Christmas? Well, there always had to be a first time.

It certainly wasn't how John had expected his day to go. The whole thing had seemed to have promise at first, a trading partner that had a relatively high level of industry and a fair amount of success avoiding the Wraith over the years. But when they'd gotten to P3X 24Y (now referred to by Rodney as Horrible Waste of My Time #59), they'd found (as they'd found 58 times before) that the locals were more suspicious than helpful, and that apparently scratching your head in public was considered an irreconcilable faux pas.

John was just glad he'd wound up with Rodney, his rant about the waste of his time notwithstanding, because Teyla was always a bear to live with when she was the one that did something that got them chased, and Ronon was still sulking over something she'd said about his hair. He just hoped they managed to get to the gate and get help before either one of them drew blood.

He really couldn't blame himself for not seeing this mission going south, because no one else had thought it would either, but he did wind up wanting to slap himself for not spotting the holiday thing faster. There'd been something naggingly familiar about the displays set up around the town, even more so about the décor of the house they wound up going to ground in, and it had made the little knot of worry in his stomach turn into an even bigger knot of worry. But it wasn't until he saw the little girl, her eyes wide and full of wonder when she asked, "Are you Lekrem Fairies?", that he figured it out.

They needed to keep her quiet, and they probably shouldn't have been doing much talking themselves, not if they wanted to avoid the anti-headscratching mob that was still looking for them, but he couldn't help answering her with, "Great, we've walked into _The Grinch Who Stole Christmas_ , and we're the fucking Grinch!"

The kid didn't have much of a chance to look anything but puzzled by his comment, because before she could ask for any kind of clarification on the fairy thing, what were probably her parents and her grandmother (or, potentially, some kind of garden gnome come to life) came running down the stairs, brandishing a poker, a broom, and a pillow (the father looked embarrassed about it, but he still wielded it like a sorority girl pro).

It took a while to get them subdued without hurting them. They'd bought into the local party line about the whole infidel thing (not that they'd heard anything about what happened, apparently having been busy getting ready for the Lekrem Fairies to come, but they took exception to someone breaking into their house for any reason, and John had to admit they had a point there), and the grandmother/gnome had been exceptionally hard to take down. The other two had been fairly cowed by their guns, but even wrinkled and bent, and maybe standing at four feet with the bent part and all, she'd thrown herself at them, trying her best to bite Rodney on the ass (though John thought that that might have had less to do with fighting them off than just giving into temptation. He often had to fight that one himself.)

Not having come to Horrible Waste of Rodney's Time #59 expecting to hold a family hostage for the holidays, they hadn't had much on them to keep the family restrained, and had wound up using the twined vines that made up the garland to tie them up, and some banners (depicting the expected elves, apparently, and Rodney, that bastard, had been quick to point out their ears to John with a snide comment about long lost relatives) as gags. The little girl, Varis, they'd kept quiet by giving her John's handheld Sudoku game. Rodney had made dire predictions of her breaking it, but all she'd actually done was consistently beat Rodney's best time on the thing, and the expression on his face was worth the price of the game as far as John was concerned (though if she started to beat _his_ best score, he might have to reconsider.)

As with most missions, even the dangerous ones, they wound up having a lot of time to kill waiting for word from Teyla and Ronon, and they spent it having a quiet, deep conversation (about how this wasn't really _The Grinch Who Stole Christmas_ , but rather _The Ref_ ), which eventually segued into a Worst Christmas Present Ever contest.

"Toe Socks. With a different color for every toe. And then rainbow horizontal stripes up the sock."

"Doesn't count as a bad gift if you actually wore them."

"Hey, I did not wear them!" Rodney sputtered that, though, and John knew the tells, so he just raised one eyebrow at him until Rodney relented. "Okay, I did wear them, but it was the Seventies, damn it, and it shouldn’t count against me."

As John had had a mullet during that same decade, a fact that he'd managed to keep hidden from Rodney for five years, and hoped to God he took with him to his grave, he decided to concede that point. "When I was five, my father gave me a rolodex."

Rodney laughed, but he shook his head. "No way. Ronon told me all about your house. With your dad's money, you probably had a new pony every year. Hell, it probably came with a gold saddle. Though, really, gold's too malleable to make a good saddle, and the weight on a pony would probably break its back, but, still, something like that."

John knew he was just joking, but his skin seemed to tighten and flush at the disbelief from someone he'd thought really knew him. That same disbelief that he'd come across before, all through his life, and it was why he never told anyone about the money. They always assumed they knew what it meant, and even though he hated the image it gave people of him, he'd be damned if he'd explain what it had really been like. "Yeah, Rodney, that's exactly what happened. I snapped ponies backs every year like clockwork."

Rodney started to laugh again, but it cut off as he looked at John, his head tilting to the side. "Is that just sarcasm, or is it something more. Since sarcasm is your default, it's hard to read its nuances, so I can't always tell."

So, great, he'd been emo enough to get Rodney to pick up on it. This mission was just getting better and better. "Look, let's not talk about this."

But Rodney wasn't having any of it, apparently determined to have a moment, regardless of the fact that they were in the middle of a (fubared) mission, and even more regardless of the fact that the alien equivalent of the Chasseur family was right in the room with them, with the gnome steadily gumming her way through the banner.

"Rodney…," but he trailed off, knowing there was no fighting time or impatient geniuses. "Look, my father had plans for me right from birth. Hell, he'd probably planned my life out before he'd even met my mother. He was _really_ big on plans."

Since Rodney's family hadn't exactly been the Cleavers, John knew he understood about dysfunctional, but this was still embarrassing to talk about. At least the Chasseurs were pretending not to listen. "Kid you not, my baby book was a five-year planner. And what the plan was… was for me to be him. So every December, instead of decorating and snowmen, there was a month in Vail or at some Swiss chateau, networking for the future, which definitely didn't include ponies for Christmas."

"You know now I'm going to be having fantasies of you and some other blue blood having hot tub sex at Vail, don't you? I have to give you, though, that a rolodex beats out toe socks."

John laughed at that, mainly in relief at how neatly Rodney had wrapped the conversation up, saving him from having to say anything more, a far better present than a rolodex. That Rodney understood all the things that he hadn't said, John had no doubt. Genius combined with familiarity, Rodney could parse it all out, at least once John had given him enough clues.

Varis completed another puzzle, the happy electronic jingle it played loud in the lull, and John looked at her, wondering if Lakrem had more in common with Christmas than just a similarity in decoration. "Hey, Varis, do you guys give gifts for Lakrem?"

"We don't give them, the fairies bring them. Just like you brought me this." She held up the game, her CindyWho curls bouncing in her excitement.

John smiled at her, easily resigned to the loss of his game. He could always make Rodney buy him a new one. "What did you get last year?"

"I got a hoe! Do you want to see it?"

John and Rodney looked at each other, weighing her obvious excitement about the present against the present itself, and then said, "She wins."

They all won not much later, Teyla calling to let them know they were coming in a cloaked jumper and would be there in a moment. John apologized as best he could to the family, even wishing them a happy holiday (which the father took in good grace, at least). He let Varis have the honor of untying the others, though, seeing as his ass was barely a handful, according to Rodney at any rate, and he'd hate to think what granny gnome would go for on him.

Later, back in Atlantis, things were back to normal. Teyla was still flailing the unwary. Ronon was missing one of his dreads. Rodney and John were fooling around in Rodney's quarters. Just as it should be.

And, okay, it was March (which was right in the Dead Zone for holidays, months past New Years with Memorial Day still months away, and, really, between all the people that knew 200 ways to kill you, the ones that could program your room to give you an laser light show starring the best of Celine Dion, or the ones that excelled at giving you new and exciting genetic abnormalities, April Fools in Atlantis was too dangerous for John's blood), and neither of them were kids anymore, but even though John had had his fill (and more) of talking about things that day, he still tried to show Rodney that he was the best gift that John had ever gotten, and Rodney certainly did his best to make up for the rolodex.

Sated, his ass still in the pleasantly sore stage (unlike tomorrow, when he'd be sitting on his hip and cursing the obviously defective part of his brain that kept thinking that asking Rodney to fuck him hard was a good idea), John drifted towards sleep, full of nothing but good will towards his fellow man. In fact he was so full of good will that, even when Rodney rubbed his ears and called him his own little Lakrem Fairy, all he did was kiss Rodney goodnight and fall asleep.

Having great (perhaps even celebratory) sex with Rodney? Something he'd done hundreds of times. Sitting on his hip and cursing about it the day after? Probably about a third of that. Plotting April Fool's revenge for the fairy comment with Zalenka? Well, there always had to be a first time.

/story


End file.
